22 Oct 2026FranceUnidentified AI writing tool (suspected)
On 22 October 2026 the urgent-applications judge of the Rennes administrative tribunal rejected a student's request, filed through a lawyer on 18 October, to suspend a university's June 2026 refusal to admit her to a psychology master's programme, finding neither urgency nor serious doubt about the refusal's legality. The judge also fined her 750 euros for an abusive request. The order gives as reasons that the request met neither condition, concerned a programme for which she manifestly lacked the level, and referred to other people's names in ways the judge read as stereotyped mass-produced appeals; it adds that the request mixed curly and straight apostrophes, used many em dashes and black round bullets, and had an ordered but repetitive argument, elements the judge called characteristic of text generated by a generative-AI tool such as Claude.ai. The order does not establish who drafted the request or whether AI was used; Clubic noted that a copy and paste from a word processor can leave the same traces.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity
AI involvement suspected · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources · Added 28/10/2026
13 Sept 2026JapanUnidentified website-generation tool
Shiga prefectural police sent two teenagers' cases to prosecutors on 27 October 2026 on suspicion of violating Japan's unauthorised computer access law. According to the police announcement as reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Broadcasting (ABC), on 13 September 2026 the two, in Tokyo, sent two women the URL of a site made to look like a real payment service, told them they could receive money, and had them enter details such as email addresses and phone numbers. Police say the two used generative AI to make the phishing site, and the Yomiuri reports that one of them, who is believed to have used generative AI to make the fake site, said he did not have the skill to build a site without AI. The same day, police say, they logged into a travel-booking site with one woman's details and paid a Tokyo hotel bill of 182,830 yen; they were later re-arrested over three portable game consoles bought with another woman's account. Police believe they took about 50 people's information, including from other payment services, and charged about 5 million yen. Both admitted the allegations, according to the police. They are not named here.
Core concern Medium reported severity Criminal Charges
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 2 sources, 1 underlying account · Added 28/10/2026
2026South KoreaUnidentified AI coding tool
In the first semester of 2026, 36 of the 62 students in a fourth-year computer engineering course on computer networking at Seoul National University were penalised for using AI on coding assignments, according to an SNU official and the course's professor as reported by JoongAng Ilbo and Yonhap on 30 July 2026. The syllabus said all course activities would be conducted without generative AI. The professor gave zero marks on the affected assignments to 25 students who came forward and a D-minus course grade to 11 who admitted AI use only when interviewed; he said all 36 admitted using AI. The department's student government objected that the criteria were unclear and that honest students were penalised while others may not have been; the professor rejected this. On 16 October 2026 a lawmaker raised SNU's AI cheating incidents at the National Assembly audit, and the university president said its AI guidelines needed to be supplemented.
Core concern Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 21/10/2026
Aug 2026Event location unknownUnidentified OpenAI generative AI service (reported)
Notices from RIZAP's client insurers say that on 20 August 2026 it emerged that a staff member of RIZAP, the company they contract for specific health guidance, had entered data containing members' personal information into an external generative AI service that RIZAP had not permitted for work. The National Civil Engineering and Construction National Health Insurance Association (Doken Kokuho) puts the whole data set at 19,996 people, 1,167 of them its own members, and says the service was not under a corporate contract and that the matter was found when the employee noticed the transmission and reported it. A local-government employees' mutual aid association counts 726 of its members across 14 branches, and the IHI group health insurance society 210, according to a security news site that reads these as subsets of the 19,996. The data included membership numbers, email addresses, names, dates of birth, sex, some addresses and phone numbers, the type of health guidance and, for members with them, high blood pressure, diabetes or dyslipidaemia. The IHI society's notice, as relayed, names OpenAI as the provider and says OpenAI answered on 1 September that the data had not been used for model training. RIZAP's release, as described in an ITmedia column, says no third party other than the service operator could have viewed the data. Doken Kokuho says RIZAP confirmed to it that no third party viewed or used the information through the service; whether the provider's staff could view it was still being checked when the mutual aid association and the IHI society published.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 5 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026
Oct 2026Event location unknownUnidentified video tool
In October 2026 Nikon disqualified the first-placed video in its 2026 Small World in Motion microscopy video competition, saying that after re-evaluating the video and supporting materials with its judging panel it had determined the entry did not comply with the competition rules on generative AI, and it moved the other winners up. Scientists had publicly questioned whether the video, presented as beating cilia from a child's airway, showed real cells. The entrant had acknowledged using AI but, according to BBC Newsround, said he believed he had followed the rules. Nikon said the decision was not a judgment of the entrant's professional reputation, scientific contributions or intent.
AI relation unknown Low reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 5 underlying accounts · Added 12/10/2026
19 Mar 2026United States, United KingdomPangram AI-text detector
On 19 March 2026 Hachette Book Group said it had cancelled the US publication of the horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard (Orbit imprint) and would not continue the UK edition (Wildfire imprint, first released in November 2025). Reports say the decision followed an investigation by Hachette and came a day after the New York Times asked the publisher about online allegations that the text was largely AI-generated. The allegations came from readers on Goodreads, Reddit and YouTube and from AI-detector results, including a 78.4 percent AI-generated score on the Pangram detector that a publishing consultant says two other services confirmed. Ballard denied personally using AI in emails to the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and told the New York Times that an acquaintance hired to edit the original self-published version used AI. Ballard wrote that "my name is ruined" and "my mental health is at an all time low", and said legal action was being pursued. Hachette’s public statements cite its commitment to original creative expression. The sources inspected do not report what its investigation found. Whether AI generated any of the text, and who used it, is unresolved.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity
AI involvement disputed · Causal attribution disputed · 9 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 29/09/2026
21 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026FrancePangram AI-text detector
On 21 September 2026 an anonymous X account, Balance ton Claude, said it had run excerpts of Thélyson Orélien's debut novel C'était ça ou mourir through the American AI-detection software Pangram, with some passages scoring up to 100 per cent probability of AI generation. On 25 September the Académie Goncourt removed the novel from the first selection of sixteen books for its 2026 prize, stating that the work is 'in all likelihood very largely the product of an artificial intelligence', based on 'the convergent result of several analyses by researchers and journalists', and also citing plagiarism in older texts by the author published in Canada (at least one short story and articles), which do not concern the novel. Orélien, a 38-year-old Canadian-Haitian writer whose novel had won the Fnac novel prize, denies using AI and says its repetitions and certain rhythms reflect his linguistic and cultural world and may be misread by automated tools. His Montreal publisher Boréal suspended promotional activities, saying it could neither confirm nor refute the allegations. Essayist Samuel Fitoussi said he was one of the people behind the account. AI-detector reliability is contested in the coverage. In October the author acknowledged plagiarism in some of his earlier work while maintaining that no sentence of the novel was generated by a machine. On 17 October 2026 The Canadian Press, published by CBC, reported that Boréal confirmed he had ended an effort to compile evidence of how the novel was written; Boréal said at that point it would keep selling the book, that sales had slowed since the controversy began, and that it could not verify how the novel was written before it received the manuscript on 12 September 2025. A major Quebec bookstore chain reported no significant change in sales. On 21 October 2026 Boréal announced that it was ending its professional relationship with him and would not reprint the novel or publish any further books by him. It said an external analysis it commissioned of all working versions of the novel revealed traces of AI markers in the metadata of certain documents, and that it does not know to what extent AI was used. In a statement the previous week Orélien had said he used AI tools 'here and there' for research but that the text, structure and plot were his own.
Contextual tracker case Medium reported severity Internal Action
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution disputed · 7 sources, 3 underlying accounts · Added 28/09/2026
24 Sept 2026 to 25 Sept 2026ItalyUnidentified image tool
On the eve of the 27-28 September 2026 Chamber by-election in the Reggio Calabria constituency, Roberto Vannacci, leader of Futuro Nazionale, posted on Facebook a campaign image showing Matilde Siracusano, Undersecretary for Relations with Parliament and a Forza Italia deputy, seated at a table beside the centre-right candidate Fabio Roscioli and Senator Claudio Lotito. According to AGI and RaiNews, the white top Siracusano wears under her floral jacket in the original photograph (taken from her Instagram profile, per RaiNews) had disappeared and a much deeper neckline appeared in its place. The Calabrian blog Iacchite', to which Vannacci pointed, said it had published the image on 24 September, that it was not a real photograph but an image produced with artificial intelligence, and that the AI had reconstructed the neck and neckline area; Vannacci reposted it on 25 September without citing the source, according to the blog. Siracusano told Adnkronos that using AI to undress a woman in order to denigrate her was 'squalid'; RaiNews reports her calling it a crime and announcing her intention to file a criminal complaint (querela), while Adnkronos and ANSA say she was weighing one; she told la Repubblica that her lawyers would act. Vannacci replied that his accusers should 'look better' for whom to blame. Ministers and politicians across parties, including Forza Italia leader Antonio Tajani, condemned the post. No complaint filing, investigation or removal of the post is reported in the inspected sources.
Core concern Low reported severity Media Coverage
AI involvement reported · Causal attribution alleged · 8 sources · Added 27/09/2026
4 May 2026FranceDIGI editorial tool
Gisi, the Infopro Digital subsidiary that publishes L'Usine nouvelle, LSA and L'Argus de l'assurance, presented its works council (CSE) on 4 May 2026 with a reorganisation built around DIGI, an in-house generative-AI editorial tool. On 12 May it opened consultation on the reorganisation and on the resulting collective dismissal of its eight secrétaires de rédaction (sub-editors), with two new chef d'édition posts for the tasks the tool could not automate, on the company's estimate that the tool would take over about 70% of sub-editor tasks. Some 250 journalists across the group's 26 titles had struck in spring 2026 against a group-wide plan to cut 19 sub-editor posts, and according to Digital Watch, citing Stratégies, five of the eight Gisi sub-editors had received letters inviting them to pre-dismissal interviews. The CSE went to court in July. On 15 September 2026 the Créteil référé judge found that carrying out the plan on an approximate basis without real-situation testing appeared to present 'un risque grave et caractérisé sur la santé physique et mentale de plusieurs catégories de salariés'. The judge suspended the reorganisation and the collective dismissal, including the redeployment processes, until real-situation tests and pilot issues are produced, under a provisional penalty of 8,000 euros per day for three months, and refused the damages provision. Gisi had argued that the risk was supposed rather than proven. It said it would continue the tests and reserved the possibility of an appeal.
AI relation unknown Medium reported severity Lawsuit Ongoing
AI involvement supported · Causal attribution supported · 6 sources, 4 underlying accounts · Added 20/09/2026